


Happy

by blueiben



Category: Batman - Fandom, Bruce Wayne - Fandom, DCU (Comics), Jason Todd - Fandom, Robin - Fandom
Genre: jason todd birthday week 2019, jtbdayweek, jtbdayweek 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 18:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20178472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueiben/pseuds/blueiben
Summary: Day 1 of Jason Todd's brithday week 2019





	Happy

He can feel it. In fact, he’s been feeling it for a while now. It’s been growing slowly somewhere deep and dark. He suspects the day he met Batman is what readied the damp black dirt. The day he met Bruce the seed was planted. When Jason was adopted, the sapling sprouted out of the earth. And the day he became Robin... perhaps, no, surely, that was the day a soft, small and white bud sprung forth.

The air is warm and thick around his cheeks and ears, loud enough to drown out the closest traffic of Gotham City moving about beneath his green boots. Jason humours himself, thinking the city had come alive and gotten with the program about how August nights are supposed to be blissfully humid and calm. Time in August moved slowly, like in the doctor’s office before your name is called. Everyone is crammed together, breathing the hot air and sweating together, unable to go back to the fresh and exciting freedom of summer vacation, stuck listening to the bang that signaled the start of school and jobs.

The line of his grappling hook latches on to a wall and sends Jason upwards in a smooth arch. When he hits the highest point there is a short blissful moment right before he descends. There, at the top, his bright yellow cape flutters and tickles the back of his knees, his hair elevates slightly from his damp forehead. When his shirt with its short green sleeves, red body and bright yellow R on his chest lifts off his skin, a brief flash of cool ripples over his body, breaking away the fabric plastered to his back. He floats.

He inhales, exhales and the world sighs softly with him. He looks towards the horizon, towards the spot where the sun set and where the shimmering, delicate rays of yellow becomes blood orange and makes the sky around purple hues which later merges with blues and blacks. The city and its inhabitants becomes distant, reduced to a low hum.

All of it melts together a moment of rare peacefulness. He embraces it.

He falls. Jason shoots his grappling gun again. Somewhere behind him is Batman, matching the starless sky. Jason doubts he thinks about how different the city feels tonight. Still the same Gotham, but not. No, Batman is focused about something else, something fleeting that can’t be read on his face or through his gestures (or rather lack thereof). Jason walks through the reel in his mind of tonight’s patrol and what he could have done wrong – but nothing stands out. It had been a calm, run-of-the-mill smooth patrol.

He reaches the top again. He inhales, exhales. Gotham sings to him with its melodic buzz.

The car ride home is long, longer than it ever has been before. Usually, Jason would let the city lights gliding by with the movements of the Batmobile rock him into sleepiness or chat enthusiastically with Bruce about patrol and the cases they had worked on. Now, he feels no need to shut his eyes or unravel half-finished mysteries. He feels oddly calm, steady. He is Gotham City deep to his bones; his mood reflects hers.

Normally when they return to the Cave, they step out of the car before Bruce tells him what he could improve on and what they will focus on in the next sparring session. Then Bruce would tell him to go to bed, often, but not always, followed by a ’good night’ said in a wistful tone. Jason would drag himself up the stairs with aching muscles, take a quick shower and pull the blankets up to his chin before drifting off to sweet sleep. Sometimes one or both would be bleeding, in need for Alfred’s medical skills. If one, the other would try not to pace back and forth or hover until cleaning and stitching wounds were done.

The car swings to the right and Jason moves with it. Bruce has his hands on the wheel with a tight grip. His intense blue eyes are focused at the road. He doesn’t speak, his mouth in a tight line.

When they do return to the cave, it’s the exactly same as they left it; dark, except the desks, miniature lab and floor illuminated by the sharp light from the computer monitors showing photos of a crime scene. On the right, the previous Batman suits are on display in glass cases next to the path leading from the computers to the stairs going up. The signature symbol on the chests are illuminated by the sharp light shining down from above the pointy ears of the mantle. Jason would never dare to speak it out loud, but he wondered many times if one day, he would have his own suit among them.

Bruce parks the Batmobile in its usual spot. He steps out of the Batmobile and closes the door behind him with a creak followed by a soft bang. Jason does too. Neither of them are hurt too seriously, just some minor bruises, so there is no need to use the medical emergency kit they have at their disposal on the desk. Jason follows Bruce, watching the black cape hanging from Bruce’s shoulders glide up the steps to the monitors. He doesn’t say anything still.

Jason should be nervous about the silence. He had grown more and more into the mantle and legacy of Robin since he first donned the cape, and although he wouldn’t perfect it, his anxiety and self-put pressure around it had slowly dabbed off. Before he’d take every note Bruce told him to heart and keep it close, repeating it like a mantra in his head for the next few days until it was drilled into his memory and movements. Now, while he still took the notes with him, the stress and the overthinking had been swapped with approaching Bruce and Alfred for advice and accepting Bruce’s lesson about how time was the biggest component. He said, “You will have to train repeatedly and consistently. When you do that, your body will adapt and your skills, your reactions and thinking will develop naturally and develop better.” So Jason gradually stopped sneaking down to the cave in the middle of the night when Bruce was away in attempts to perfect his moves.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” Jason sighs, breaking the quiet. “Good night.” His right boot is on the first step when Bruce says, “Jason, wait a minute.” His deep voice bounces off the stone walls of the large cave. He’s taken off his cowl and Jason notices there’s a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, making his black hair run flat over it.

_He should get a haircut soon_, Jason thinks absentmindedly as he walks back to where Bruce stands. If he didn’t know any better, Bruce looks a little nervous. Flexing and relaxing his left hand and briefly licking his lips.

“I thought about giving you this at breakfast tomorrow… but since it’s already past midnight…” Bruce takes out a small black box with a silver ribbon in the upper right corner and gives it to Jason. It’s small, small enough for Jason to hold in one hand. It’s heavy.

“What is it?” Jason asks.

“You have to open it to find out,” Bruce replies a little amused. A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

Jason flips the silver latch on the front and pulls the lid up. The insides are covered with black velour and on the bottom floor lies a watch with dark blue straps wrapped around a small circular cushion. The dial is in the same marine blue shade as the straps but in polished and slick metal. The case encircling it, the lines marking numbers from one to twelve (as well as the five lines between them) and the three hands are in the shiniest silver Jason has ever seen. The crystal encapsulating it is spotless. Over the thick mark that represents the number 6 on the dial, ‘Titanium’ is written in narrow, stylish letters.

“It’s beautiful,” Jason whispers. He reaches out to touch it but stops himself, even though he’s still wearing his green gloves. “…But I don’t understand. It’s for me?”

“It’s for you.” Bruce smiles warmly, which reaches his bright eyes. “Happy birthday.”

Jason’s jaw drops. Oh. _Oh_. It had been August 16th for the past two hours. He had been 15 for two whole hours already. “I forgot,” he giggles timidly. There’s a small flicker in his chest, a switch, that makes Jason understand why this night’s patrol had been the way it was and he almost loses his breath.

He’s happy.

“Turn it over,” Bruce says. “You have to see back of it.”

Jason puts the box on the desk before he carefully picks up the watch. Even through his gloves he feels the cold of the silver. He turns it over so the crystal rests against his palm. In the sharp light from the screens, Jason reads the inscription in cursive. It says simply:

_To you, my son, as you’re becoming a man. I love you. _

There are two dates as well; the date when Jason was adopted and today’s.

Jason reads the two sentences over and over until his vision becomes blurry. He places the watch back on the soft cushion as gingerly as he can with shaky fingers.

“What do you think?” Bruce’s voice has the smallest undertone of concern. “Is it al-_oof_!”

Jason falls into Bruce and throws his arms around him. Jason has scratched the surface of what he hopes is a big growth spurt. When he first properly hugged - or rather clung to – Bruce, it was after he had a nightmare about his mom where she had rotten flesh and blood dripping out of her ears and eyes, hovering inches over the ground. She had reached out to caress his cheek with fingers that were missing nails. Just when she touched his tear stained cheek, he jerked awake and in a panic he had run out of his room. Right outside he crashed into Bruce in his pyjamas.

“I heard you screaming, are you all right?” Bruce asked with a frown. Unable to speak, Jason had just started weeping and clasped his arms around Bruce’s waist. It didn’t take long before Bruce’s hands were on his back in attempts to comfort him. “It’s okay,” Bruce said in a soothing voice.

Back then he reached Bruce’s solar plexus. Approximately 15 months later his head rests comfortable on the centre of Bruce’s chest. Two large hands find the same spots on his back to squeeze Jason gently.

“Thank you,” Jason whispers with a grin and a little wet-eyed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Bruce replies. Jason can hear the smile on his face.

_There is no way he understands_, Jason thinks. _He cannot possibly understand that I owe him everything. _

He’s so happy he might just burst.

Later, when Jason is in his newly-made bed, his thoughts roam freely while his body relaxes, edging closer to sleep. Happiness feels warm and fuzzy inside him like liquid gold floating through his veins. Bruce, Alfred, school, Robin, food and a bed… he has everything he could ever want in life. Or, okay, maybe not everything (mom is still dead)… but as good as everything.

As he counts his blessings, a terrible understanding creeps up on him: one day, either close or far away, this beating happiness will disappear. The flower will wither and die away, the glow in his chest will fade, he won’t genuinely smile anymore. Happiness has never lasted a lifetime, has it?

_Don’t think about that now,_ he commands himself. He lifts his head to look at the black box containing the beautiful watch Bruce gave him earlier on the nightstand.

_To my son._

He reaches out and touches the smooth surface. Maybe things won’t be as good as they are now but… as long as Bruce is there, it won’t matter. It won’t matter at all.


End file.
